Among the forgotten giants of rock music, the late Felix A. Pappalardi waxed history as a producer (Cream, The Youngbloods, among many others) and as a bassist with Mountain. Felix’s work in the studio helped usher in the “album rock” format – thereby affording rock musicians the level of artistic credibility associated with their jazz counterparts.

A classically trained, accomplished multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, arranger, collaborator, recording artist – Pappalardi’s thick Gibson EB tone defined late 60s hard rock genres akin to his colleague Jack Bruce. Pappalardi was also an in-demand session cat for much of the 1960s as well, appearing on seminal sides by Tom Paxton, John Sebastian, and Jesse Colin Young, among others.

Felix Pappalardi Sound & Vision

Felix crooning “Theme from an Imaginary Western at the Cincinnati Pop Festival in 1970 https://youtu.be/iJDX-sYfJ_M

Tony Senatore renders Felix:

“Theme” https://youtu.be/w-993iJLGfA

“For Yasgur’s Farm” https://youtu.be/cIwGTL2UIr4

Tony Senatore: I was recently asked which of Felix Pappalardi’s bass lines best exemplify what he did best, which was playing melodically while being very well aware of the harmonic structure of the song. I decided it would be this one. Listen to the line over Leslie West’s solo…incredible! And I would say influenced by Bach.